


An Excellent Judge of Character

by secace



Series: Caffè Arturiano [5]
Category: Arthurian Literature - Fandom, Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms
Genre: College, Gen, POV Outsider, based somewhat heavily on the only college class i liked, shoutout to my wgs professor whomst i turned into an author of medieval lit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23651659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secace/pseuds/secace
Summary: Things continued that way for a few weeks, with Brangaine feeding her new horror stories every day- Gawain threatened Gromer with a knife, Gawain made out with his cousin, there's a girl whos so in love with Gawain she has a shrine in her dorm room, Gawain's little brother set fire to the west wing of the library, Gawain hooked up with Sparrow on the side of the road under a giant cross, Gawain owns a horse, Gawain only passed his bio class freshman year because he blew the professor. Gawain personally knows the Pope and he set off greek fire in the Vatican.
Series: Caffè Arturiano [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017424
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	An Excellent Judge of Character

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reynier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reynier/gifts).



> coffeeshop au gawain is an IR and WGS duel major and that's a wild combination, so I put him in a queer theory class and scientifically recorded the results 
> 
> this is a fuckin rogues gallery of extremely obscure Arthurian characters, several of which were so obscure i or the server had to come up with names for them
> 
> cerise is the name we gave malegaunts sister from knight of the cart  
> derek is the name we gave the turk from gawain and the Turk  
> joconde is the name we gave to the lady gawain rescues from the devil in latre  
> laurel is a cousin of Lynette and lyonesse  
> Gologras is from The Knightly Tale of Gologras and Gawain  
> carle is from The Carle of Carlisle
> 
> and the professor is the Pearl Poet, anonymous author of sgatgk

“I'm an International Relations major,” he explained, in a tone indicating it to be around the fiftieth time, because if ever a day came when being in college didn’t involve stating one's major at least once per hour, it was not, apparently, that day. “Minor in Economics.”

Cerise felt her face fall a little bit. According to the hastily made nametag, he was “Gawain he/him” and his handwriting was neat in an unsettling way. The name sounded distantly familiar, and she shelved it away to ask her roommate later.

To put it frankly, he didn’t look like the sort of person to attend any WGS class except under duress, and certainly not a higher level Queer Theory course. Cerise was honestly too gay to make an objective judgement, but he seemed like the kind of man who would be considered handsome, and was slouching back in his chair with the contrived indolence of complete social confidence. 

She turned to the person on her right and made introductions, the nagging weirdness and vague recognition setting in the back of her head as they began going over the syllabus. She didn’t see him take notes, not even when the professor, an older figure who for reasons inscrutable went only by Dr Pearl, projected a link to download all the readings for free. He was the first to leave when class ended, and she indulged in sharing a judgy look with the rest of the assemblage as he did so.

On the walk back to her dorm, Cerise took out her phone and asked her roommate, who always seemed to be in on the gossip after rooming with the infamous Isolde the previous year, if she knew a Gawain.

BRANGAINE: _Gawain? Brown hair, hot but kind of short?_

CERISE: _At least two of those things_

BRANGAINE: _i think u gotta tell me everything in person. U busy tonight? Ill pick up takeout_

Cerise responded in affirmative to the plan, and several hours later found herself sitting cross-legged next to Brangaine on the lower bunk, hunched over containers of Chinese food.

“So,” Brangaine said, gesturing speculatively with chopsticks, “what did he do?”

“He didn’t do anything, he was in my Queer Theory class. Who is he? I feel like I’ve seen him.”

Brangaine nodded, motioned to the wonton she’d just stuffed in her mouth, and then held up a finger. Cerise waited. 

Finally, Brangaine began, “Okay. Firstly, I don’t condone gossip, so this is all true. Here’s what I know about Gawain Orkney. One.” She held up a finger. “He’s like a total player. Everyone knows a girl who’s slept with him. I know like three.”

“I don’t,” Cerise countered. 

Brangaine shook her head. “ You do. Ettarde, for one. Oh, and Bertilak’s girlfriend, what’s her name. This is after they started dating, by the way.”

“Christ,” Cerise said around a mouthful of fried rice. 

Brangaine crossed herself. She was very Catholic. “Anyhow, two, his family is super-rich, old money. I know, yikes,” she said in response to the expression on her roommate's face. “It gets worse. Three, he has a crapton of brothers. Agravaine, Gaheris, Gareth, and Mordred, and only one of them, Gareth, is cool. He’s dating Lynette and I trust her. But all five of them work at that weird coffeeshop everyone goes to, Lionheart. Four, you know when the maths building caught fire last semester? Everyone says he’s the one that did it. Apparently he’s been arrested before, too.”

Brangaine put down her fingers as Cerice stabbed at a noodle, “What the fuck is he doing in my class then?”

“No idea. Keep me updated though, that’s so weird.”

The conversation moved on to the latest Isole and Tristan drama- apparently, they had broken up over winter break and now he was dating another girl, also named Isolde. 

But she recalled it in curious dread as she returned to the class two days later and took her place to his left. He casually wished her a good afternoon as other students filed in, and she returned it icily. If he sensed this he didn't show it, a small quirked smile fixed on his face, half-closed eyes roaming lazily around the room. He didn't have a notebook today, either. 

Class began, Dr Pearl presented a quick PowerPoint on the terms in that day's reading and opened the discussion with a few guiding questions. There was, as there often was on the first day of a seminar-style class, a sudden and overpowering shuffling of papers. After several long seconds during which it was clear that no one else was going to speak, Cerise saw- oh God help them- Gawain raise a hand.

Dr Pearl, with an expression of very slight amusement, indicated he could speak. An incline of the head in acknowledgement, hand dropped languidly into his lap, he spoke and-

-made a cogent and concise point with textual evidence which evinced understanding both of the reading and the broader systems it discussed.  _ Huh. _

A collective blink of surprise rocketed around the room, leaving untouched only a seemingly oblivious Gawain and Dr Pearl, who nodded approvingly and asked if anyone wanted to build off or counter that statement. The ice thus broken, discussion began in awkward fits and starts, the opener of said discussion settling back in his chair as if to say his work was done.

Cerise couldn’t even try and counter what he'd said out of spite, because she agreed with everything he had said. So he had done his homework. He was still a philandering arsonist. At the end of class, he again left first, and the rest of them shared another, still withering but now slightly more confused, glance.

Cerise related this incident to Brangaine that night between physics problems, and she nodded knowingly.

“Yeah, I’ve been asking about him since you brought it up. Apparently he’s really smart and has, like, a 3.8 GPA. It’s crazy. I mean if his family is loaded he probably has a bunch of tutors and stuff, but still.”

That was it then. He needed a diversity requirement, and only this upper-division class fit in his schedule. Because he was rich and had good grades, an exception was made. Mystery solved.

Over the next few weeks, a standard schedule formed in her Queer Theory class. Gawain would make one, maybe two comments, always thoughtful and informed, never took notes, and left first. Little more information would have unfolded had not Dr Pearl been so fond of group work.

But, three weeks into the semester the first test was announced and they sorted the class into groups arranged by seating and assigned them collective review projects, the results of which were to be presented the day before the test.

So her group stood at herself, Gawain, and Gologras, of whom no more could be said but that he was shy but seemed nice enough. Dr Pearl gave them ten minutes to discuss meeting times amongst themselves and the room erupted into chatter and the squeaking of chairs.

“I can’t meet after class, I have to dash to work. I'm free earlier though,” Gawain said apologetically, drumming his fingers on the table.

“Is that why you always leave early?” Cerise asked, surprised.

He shrugged, “Yeah. This class did not work with my schedule at all, but I wanted to take it, so... running a few blocks is probably good for me anyway, wholesome exercise and all, yeah?”

“Yeah,” agreed Gologras, as if it was a statement of great depth and importance. Uh oh, Cerise thought. 

“Oh, huh. Well, how about three to five tomorrow?” she said.

“That works. We could meet at Lionheart.” Seeing her dubious expression, he chuckled. “I'm not just saying it out of brand loyalty, I swear. There’s a nice little study lounge area, and it’ll be pretty quiet on a weekday afternoon. What do you think, Gologras?”

“Yeah,” he repeated, looking slightly disoriented, like a baby turtle that followed the lights of the city rather than that of the moon and was crushed beneath car tires, with the city lights, in this case, being Gawain’s smile. 

Oh no, thought Cerise, louder than the first time.

“Sure,” she said.

They all concluded once more that this plan was agreeable, and class wrapped up with Gawain predictably first out of the door. 

“He chose to be there, he said it didn’t work with his schedule,” Cerise said to the long-suffering Brangaine from upside down in a spinny chair.

“Quite the mystery,” she agreed. “Oh, so I’ve been digging, you know Professor Carle? Well, apparently, the IR department had some sort of field trip thing last year and Gawain stayed at his house, and…”

She continued, telling a story that  _ had _ to be apocryphal. 

“Wife and daughter, same night,” Cerise said, torn between bemusement and abject horror.

“And the attempted murder,” Brangaine reminded her. “I can’t believe he hasn’t been expelled.”

“No kidding.”

So it was with no small degree of trepidation that she arrived at Lionheart Coffee Co. the following afternoon. It was, as promised, relatively empty, but for a pair of nearly identical women lingering over pastries and Lancelot nestled in the corner with a sketchbook. She gave a little wave but, assuming him occupied, left him to his drawing.

She sat down on the couch of a slightly tucked-away section, assuming it to be the area Gawain had meant. Gologras was already there, having come to the same conclusion. The man himself appeared moments later, but didn’t take a seat, leaning casually against the arm of the couch.

“Hey, I'm just gonna go say hi.” He gestured to the corner. “Then we can get started.”

She nodded mutely, the stories Brangaine had told running all around the inside of her head, and he straightened and joined his friend, presumably, in the back table.

Lancelot dropped the sketchbook in what was either horrified or overjoyed recognition, and thus followed a brief but inaudible conversation. Gawain shook the coffee cup, found it empty, and left him despite half-hearted protest, slipping behind the counter.

“Hey, you’re not working today,” snapped the man currently working the register.

“Funny coincidence, Bedivere, he’s not paying today.” With that, Gawain refilled the drink, returned to the corner resident who seemed currently to be residing on a different plane of existence. 

That baffling task complete, Gawain returned to the couch and dropped down on the opposite end of it from Cerise.

“Ready to start?”

They did so, making a surprising amount of progress, a not insignificant factor being Gawain’s shocking competence despite the fact he had no notes and was accessing the shared doc on his phone. After a good hour of work, a break was called, and she rose to go see whether the coffee was any good.

“Oh, tell Bedivere I said you could have a discount,” Gawain suggested. “He won’t give you one but it’ll piss him off.”

Gologras laughed. He seemed to think everything Gawain said was very funny. Ignoring that approaching trainwreck, Cerise went up to the counter and got a coffee. Perhaps as some sort of reward for ignoring Gawain, the man at the counter- Bedivere- gave her a cookie for free, accompanied by a sympathetic look. She was putting her wallet back in her purse when there was a muffled exclamation and the sound of something which later turned out to be a sketchbook being dropped from the corner. She looked. Lancelot was staring with chagrin across the room, where, following his gaze-

Oh, holy fuck.

Bedivere only sighed and rolled his eyes, as if he was disappointed but hardly surprised to see Gawain making out with a near-stranger in an extremely public coffee shop in the middle of the afternoon. 

_ Well, I guess that’s why he’s in this class _ , Cerise thought numbly, taking a bite of her cookie.

“So,” Brangaine said, spinning around at her desk as soon as Cerise walked into the dorm room. “I asked Laudine, and she said Gawain is a piece of shit that broke her and Owain up last year for no reason. But she directed me to Luned, who sent me to Lyonesse, whose sister is, I told you, remember, dating Gawain’s little brother Gareth, and she says that-”

“He’s bi?”

“Yeah! Wait, how do you know that?”

Cerise related the events of the study session, finding herself, despite this revelation, only slightly more inclined to like him than before.

“Hold on,” she said, before Brangaine could comment, “if his family is so loaded, why do they all work?”

They mulled over this new mystery for a while and concluded knowing no more than before. Mentioning it offhandedly in her Physics class over a lab, however, she was surprised to see her lab partner turn an interesting shade of red at the name Gawain. Derek put down his lab notes and ran a hand through his hair with a nervous chuckle.

“I know Gawain. We’re both on the tennis team. He’s on the equestrian and lacrosse teams, too.”

“We have an equestrian team?”

He shrugged. “I guess. Gawain is cool though, he’s- he’s cool,” Derek finished lamely, going, if it was possible, even more red.

“Did you hook up with-”

“Let’s weigh these!” he said, quickly changing the subject. This meant that yes, in fact, he had. She dropped the issue, not wanting to know more in this particular area. Concluding that satyricism being unconfined was no reason to like Gawain more than before, she continued her investigation.

Things continued that way for a few weeks, with Brangaine feeding her new horror stories every day- Gawain threatened Gromer with a knife, Gawain made out with his cousin, there's a girl whos so in love with him she has a shrine in her dorm room, Gawain's little brother set fire to the west wing of the library, Gawain hooked up with Sparrow on the side of the road under a giant cross, Gawain owns a horse, Gawain only passed his bio class freshman year because he blew the professor. Gawain personally knows the Pope and he set off greek fire in the Vatican.

But everyone she asked who knew him said he was a prince among men. And that wasn't just from people who had slept with him, though that turned out to be an alarming percentage of her acquaintances. Joconde, known lesbian and Genuinely Cool Person, talked about him like he hung the moon and stars. 

Then she made the mistake of mentioning him to Lancelot. 

Sophomore year she had taken one look at Lancelot, decided he was a golden retriever with anxiety and needed to be protected from the evils of the world, and had been trying to teach him how to use social media ever since. 

What followed the brief mention she made was a twenty-minute rant about how Gawain was a seraph fallen from heaven to grace the earth with mediocre coffee and dirty jokes. They had met in calculus Freshman year and Lancelot had ever since been head over heels in a way that, were it directed at anyone else, would have been sweet. 

Cerise tried to gently quell these sentiments, but found they were too firmly rooted, and she gave up, resigning herself to several hours of listening to him cry sometime in her future. This Lancelot-related sin was one of the gravest, and affixed her dislike.

As a result, Cerise went to class every day prepared to be newly annoyed at Gawain Orkney.

She wasn’t often disappointed. On one day in particular, however, she reached a breaking point.

Gawain entered right as Dr Pearl was starting class, and wasn’t even pretending to pay attention. His eyes were lined darkly, and his skin was dotted with butterfly bandages on his hands, neck, and even two on his left cheek, purple bruises spreading like ink drops in a dish of water over his knuckles. He collapsed into the chair next to her, popped the top of an espresso shot can, knocked it back in one go and then let his head fall onto the desk into his arms, the can rolling off somewhere onto the floor.

“Morning. Evening. Afternoon. Fuck. Hi, Cerise,” he mumbled, face still pressed to the table. 

“Christ.”

“He sure is,” Gawain agreed meaninglessly. Cerise looked across the room at Laurel, whom she had never spoken to outside of class but felt they were bonded together closer than family over their mutual annoyance with Gawain, and shared eye rolls. Laurel smirked and made a gesture with her hand to indicate drinking, thumb and pinky sticking out. Cerise shrugged. Gawain seemed like the sort of person who would be monumentally hungover on a Tuesday afternoon.

Dr Pearl started class with one concerned glance at Gawain, who had not moved in several minutes. The reading for that class was an incredibly dense analysis of the intersection of Marxist theory and queer identity with not a single word under two syllables and no sentence that was not also a paragraph. To put things simply, they desperately needed Gawain if they hoped to make any headway into the discussion questions.

Which was unfortunate as he seemed to be slipping somewhere from despondently exhausted into full-on comatose. 

There was, as there often was, a long silence. Even Dr Pearl was looking at Gawain speculatively.

Finally, the professor cleared their throat. “If you could be with us, Gawain?”

Gawain started up, having evidently fallen asleep, and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Aw, fuck, sorry Pearl. I'm up.”

Cerise was frozen in horror at this level of familiarity, though Gawain seemed oblivious to his own rudeness.

“You alright there, kid?” Dr Pearl asked, evidently not offended.

“Mhm, I'm golden, I'm untouchable, dinna worry 'bout me,” Gawain asserted, in what from anyone else would have been a joke.

“Did you win?” the professor asked bafflingly. The class was now engaged in looking back and forth between the two like a shelf of bobbleheads.

Gawain gave a thumbs up and a somewhat feral grin, “Fuck, yeah!”

“I suppose that's fine then. Let's try that discussion again, huh?”

They tried that discussion again, and though Gawain still failed to contribute, Laurel managed to stumble through something and they rocked haltingly into a proper seminar. Gawain put his head back on the desk and returned to sleep.

In fact, he was still asleep as the class ended and people began to file out. After a moment of hesitation, Cerise tapped him on the shoulder. Gawain bolted up, the front two legs of the chair lifting a few inches off the ground, its occupant standing before the legs hit the floor again. 

“Oh,” he said after a moment, running a hand through his now wild hair. “Thank you, Cerise.”

“Your shift, right?” 

“Ah, shit!” He rushed out the door, Cerise still trailing after in search of answers. “Kay is going to be so pissed.”

“What is wrong with you today?” she demanded, as he skidded abruptly to a stop halfway down a corridor, realized he was going the wrong way and made an about-face, almost running into her as he did so.

“There's nothing wrong with me. What, I'm not allowed to be tired? Maybe I was studying.”

“And you got into a fistfight with Karl Marx?”

“Oh.” He made a vague gesture at his face, rounding the stairs. “That, right.”

“Honestly, I don't know how you get away with it all!” she said, clattering down the stairs behind him. “You're rude to the professor, show up to class hungover, fuck anything that moves, including married people, you're an arsonist and a thief, and yet everyone I talk to fucking adores you! You should be expelled, fuck, you should be in jail!”

“Oh, yeah?” he said mildly, bursting out the doors of the building and setting off at top speed for the coffeeshop. 

“Yes! You're just a spoiled rich boy who bought his own hype. One day, Gawain, I hope it all comes crashing down for you.”

He stopped, shaking slightly. For a moment she thought he was angry and took a step back. But if he was angry he had a funny way of showing it- he was laughing.

“You are an excellent judge of character, Cerise,” he said, without turning around.

“That's it?”

“What?” He turned around, still nothing but dark amusement in his tired eyes. “You want my tragic backstory? You're not getting it. I'm just not a very good person and you're the only one who sees it. I hope you feel special.”

She let him leave, wondering distantly how he planned to work a full shift when he could barely stay awake for an hour-long class.

“Apparently, last night Gawain-”

“I don't wanna hear it, Bran, I've got a lot of work.”

Brangaine frowned, “Fine, fine. But tell me, was he all beat up today?”

Cerise admitted that he was, taking her place at her desk and opening her laptop to a half-finished essay.

“Don't you wanna know who he fought?”

“Nope.”

Affecting a fake pout, Brangaine returned to her own work.

Gawain was back to the standard level of chipperness the next day, and if he remembered the previous day's conversation he didn't bring it up, wishing her a good afternoon as usual. He deigned to explain Judith Butler to them in class discussion and left early, but not to the point of rudeness. This would have been the end of it, and for a week or so it was.

But then, in the middle of cramming for her physics midterm, she received a call. They had exchanged numbers during the group work incident, but he was only entered as a frowny face. That was the only reason she answered, that she did not know it was Gawain who was calling.

“Hey,” he said, something in his voice a recognition that he wasn't wanted, “I was wondering if you could send me your notes for the next couple days.”

“You don't take notes when you're in class, why when you're out of it?”

He laughed, but it sounded tired. “I record the lectures on my phone and take notes later. Pearl’s okay with it, I asked them.”

Another mystery solved, she supposed.

“Are you really rich?” she asked, instead of answering his question.

A long pause.

“How's this? I answer three questions honestly, in exchange for the notes. Equitable?”

“Five.”

“Three.” The amusement was back in his voice. Abominably, the whole conversation seemed amusing to him.

“Deal, fine. Are you actually rich?”

“My family is wealthy but I'm estranged from them. I left when I was eighteen and took my brothers with me and I haven't had a dime from them since.”

Gawain recited this like it was practiced.

She paused to consider. “Why don't you want people to know you are dual majoring in Gender Studies?”

An indrawn breath, then a chuckle. “Sort of clashes with my reputation, doesn't it? Besides, people get weird about it and I'm sick of the overdramatic bemusement.”

A disappointingly vague answer, but it seemed to be at least partially an honest one.

“Final question. Why did you set fire to the math building?”

“Aren't you going to ask  _ if  _ I set fire to the math building?”

She felt her mouth tighten. “ Waste of a question.”

“Got me,” Gawain admitted. “The mechanics of it are as complex as they are dull but in summary, my little brother stole a bunch of shit and I was covering his tracks.”

“How did that involve burning down a building?”

He hummed. “Out of questions, sorry. You have to insert another quarter.”

She sighed, exasperated. “Fine, you've paid for your notes in full.”

Cerise expected him to hang up. He didn't. “Thank you. Now my list of shit to deal with this week has gone from everything to everything except WGS notes.” 

There was a pause. Then, as if sensing the unasked- and unpaid for- question, he continued. “Family shit, I have to fly to Italy, it's going to be a whole fucking mess. You know how it goes.”

“Family shit,” she agreed. Between her asshole brother and her useless father, she did, in fact, know how it went. 

What followed was, shockingly, an actual real conversation, which she blamed on sleep deprivation and midterm stress. 

“Oh fuck,” Gawain said finally when a lull arrived, “Its three am. I'll let you go. It was nice talking to you, Cerise.”

“Likewise, surprisingly. I still don't like you.”

“Oh?” he asked, and she could hear the smug diversion on his face.

“Yeah. When I met you, Gawain Orkney, I thought you were an annoying spoiled rich cishet playboy philanderer who was drinking college away waiting for your trust fund to pay out. And now I think you're an annoying, studious cis philanderer who’s drinking college away waiting to die in a barfight. And you're a shitty barista.”

She waited for him to stop laughing.

“Well,” Gawain said finally, “I stand guilty as charged on all counts but one. I am an annoying studious philanderer who's been stabbed more than once and doesn't know how to make a decent cup of coffee. Good luck on your midterm.”

“Oh,” she said. He hung up.

A week later he returned to class, as put together as usual; that is to say, well-dressed but deliberately tousled in a way that was likely meant to invoke Byronic indolence. He wished her a good afternoon, and gave the same to Laurel, who was perched on the desk.

“How's your brother?” Laurel asked, with a slight frown.

“Still, to his chagrin, my brother. How's your cousin?”

“Still too good for your family.”

“Uh,” said Cerise. 

“My cousin is Lynette, she's dating Gareth, his second youngest- third youngest?”

Gawain shrugged.

“Younger brother. I'm going out with his other brother, Agravaine, who is the, uh- next oldest?”

Confirmation from Gawain.

“Wait, aren't you-” 

“I'll tell you later.”

Truly, it seemed, there was no end to the complicated web of pointless drama spun by that family. Cerise gave up, wished Lancelot all the luck in the world, and got out her notebook.

Dr Pearl (apparently they were Gawain's faculty advisor, and had known him for three years, thus the informality) announced the beginning of class, Laurel darted back to her desk, and discussion was called for. The call for discussion was met with silence. Gawain raised his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> the guy gawain fought was eric. the only good part of the post vulgate is gawain getting to kill eric and I wanted to preserve that very cool thing gawain did for gay rights by killing eric who sucks. i almost made it epinogras to continue our very obscure characters train but. gawain can punch him later, eric deserves this
> 
> and yes there is a fic in the works about the agravaine and laurel thing consider this a teaser


End file.
